Spain’s Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism reports that a record 47.2m tourists visited Spain in the first eight months of 2015, representing a 4.1% rise on the same period last year and an additional 1.8m non-resident visitors.

 

The Ministry reports that the largest contribution to this growth came from France (+102,000 visitors), Asian countries (+22%) and the UK, although the MInistry says it was pleased with the relative year-on-year growth advances made by Asian country nationals (+37.7%) and US visitors (+21.9%).

 

It added that all regions of the country saw tourism increases, although the Canary Islands ‘advanced more moderately’ at plus one per cent. All major tourism markets also increased with the exception of Germany

 

The trend is good news for World Duty Free and its near-new owner Dufry which operates all of the main airport duty free shops in Spain, as well as Lagardere Travel Retail and others who also have significant traval retail outlets in Spain.

 

In the traditionally busy month of August, Spain received 9.2m international tourists, +1.6% on the same month last year, while creating a new record for the month.

 

 

 

 

French tourists rose by 22.6% in the month, with both Catalonia and Valencia proving very popular, while German tourists fell back by -8.1%. The MInistry says this loss was ’greatly hurt’ in the Balearic Islands, Catalonia, the Canary Islands and Andalusia.

 

Better news was that Italians accounted for 7.4% of arrivals in August, representing a rise of 5.3%, with ‘significant’ increased flows seen in the Balearic Islands, Madrid and Valencia.

 

Visitors from The Netherlands also increased by 14.1%, with significant annual increases to Valencia, and Andalusia.

 

Many of the additional tourists – most notably British and French – have undoubtedly chosen Spain this year in preference to some other locations in the Middle East and Tunisia (down by 1m tourists between Jan-Aug) with the latter destination off the radar for mainstream UK tourists for obvious reasons at present.

 

Top small image: A typical beach scene in Benidorm, Spain (Photo credit: JM Perez).